But so far, many newspaper columnists and editorial writers appear to have left their gloves on when it comes to covering recent proposals to fix the country’s broken access to information system.

Consider this: on October 9, the Canada’s information commissioners issued a joint resolution calling for a modernization of the laws that allow the public to obtain public records.

Eight days later, federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault — while releasing her annual report — warned there are “unmistakable signs of significant deterioration” in the federal access to information system.

Legault was principally referring to increased complaints about that system, as well as delays in responding to access requests.

But, when I analyzed Ottawa’s own access statistics, I found other troubling indicators.

For example, the percentage of records released in full — without having information stricken from them — has dramatically decreased.

It’s gone from a high of 40.5 percent in fiscal 1999/00 to a low of 15.8 percent in 2009/10, increasingly slightly to 21.2 percent as of 2011/12.

Now the NDP want “urgent reforms” made to the Access to Information Act, with Legault having earlier told reporters “the health of Canadian democracy is at stake.”

Of course, she could also have said the health of Canada’s fourth estate is at stake since that system is one of the few means journalists have of obtaining information that hasn’t been managed and massaged by government and opposition message makers.

Without it, journalists have one less tool to deconstruct the state and hold it to account — further relegating reporters to role of repeaters, a repugnant and unsustainable proposition.

After all, thanks to social media, institutions and officials increasingly no longer need the news media to reach the masses. So what is the economic or social value of reporters just regurgitating political press releases and advertising?

Yet, despite journalists’ self-interest in getting into the ring with the NDP, Legault and the country’s other information commissioners, many newspaper editorial writers and columnist have yet to do so according to a search of Canadian Newsstand.

That database features articles from 270 of the country’s newspapers. Among the papers are those published by Postmedia Network Inc. and Brunswick News Inc., as well as FP Newspaper Inc., Glacier Media Inc., Torstar Corp.’s dailies and some of the properties owned by Black Press Group Ltd. Among those excluded are papers owned by Quebecor Inc. and Transcontinental Inc.

Of the newspapers in Canadian Newsstand, just four — the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, the Times Colonist and the Toronto Star — ran editorials or columns in their print editions between October 8 and November 25 following up on the commissioners’ announcements or the NDP’s reform proposals.

The database also shows just 35 articles covering those stories were published in print or on the Canadian Press’s wire during that same period.

Of course, there are many reasonable explanations for this drought of ink and I’ve heard them all.

Some journalists assume Canadians aren’t interested in “inside baseball” stories such as this one.

Others rightly conclude it’s unlikely any majority government would introduce or pass legislation letting more sunlight into its dark, private spaces.

And then there are those who say criticisms of our access to information system aren’t news given that they aren’t new.

But if journalists don’t “take the gloves off by pushing governments to be more transparent” we and the citizens of this country will continue to be on the losing side of the fight to know how Canada is being run and on who’s behalf.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean Holman is an associate professor of journalism at Mount Royal University in Calgary and a freedom of information researcher. A former investigative journalist covering British Columbia politics, Holman is now pursuing a doctorate at the University of Birmingham where he is writing a dissertation on the history of the federal government’s Access to Information Act. READ MORE

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"...at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves residents of an unknowable country. It is a nation of the governed rather than the self-governed – a place where transparency is routinely sacrificed on the high altar of peace, order and what some would call good governance." READ MORE

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